Language-integrated Semantic Queries (LISeQ)

Data access is tricky and error-prone. Many formats require a deep understanding of the underlying techniques to be accessible. Additionally, the access itself is often error-prone due to unchecked queries or simply wrong assumptions while processing query results. Ideally, a developer could abstract away from underlying implementations and instead rely on a type-safe, conceptual data access. The goal of the LISeQ project is to provide such a form of data access for RDF data. However, challenges arise since it requires (1) type-checked integrated querying, (2) type inference and polymorphism for dealing with the magnitude of types typically found in data sources as well as (3) constraints for the data that allow programs to specify conditions under which they are able to run. We plan to achieve this by integrating description logics (DL) into programming languages concepts that solve these requirements. Lastly, the project also plans for evaluating the implicit hypothesis of a higher productivity when using type-safe data access. The talk will provide details on the project itself as well as on the intuition on how the project objectives can be achieved.